'The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. '

Samuel Johnson

James Holman was born in 1786. In 1799, on the morning of his thirteenth birthday, he signed on as an ordinary seaman in his Majesty's Royal Navy and for the next ten years, sailed the seven seas. His natural quick wits and fortitude in the face of adversity, earned him swift promotion, and his career afloat seemed secure. Then, whilst serving as a Lieutenant on board 'The Guerriere' off the coast of the Americas, Holman was struck with the scurvy and blinded. Invalided from the force in 1810, he existed on a meagre pension for eight years until, in the spring of 1818, he advised friends that he intended to visit France and Italy, and would be away for a few months. Holman stayed abroad for over three years and during that time, his letters home contain the details of his inimitable exploits.

He went swimming from a boat moored two miles off Marseilles, confident that the shouts of the other passengers would guide him back. In Rome he climbed into the dome of St Peters Basillica and wanted to scale the lightning conductor, arguing that as he couldn't see the drop below, it would be no different from climbing a tree. In Naples, no one stopped him walking around the rim of Vesuvius, where again he could not see the unpleasant fate below.
He returned home for only a few months before setting off again; boarding a boat at Gravesend bound for Russia.

Holman left the ship at St Petersburg and started an epic journey across Russia and Siberia, which even a sighted traveller would have thought twice about.
Though possessing no official permission and speaking no Russian, he set off on a 3,500 mile journey to Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia. Crossing foggy marshes alive with malaria bearing Siberian mosquitoes, which he thwarted by wearing a bee keeper's gauze netting thoughtfully packed in London for just such an occassion, James arrived in Irkutsk six months later. Here, he was arrested by an official sent by the Emperor and despite his blindness, charged with being a spy. Ecorted in chains to Moscow, James was held as a state prisoner for eighteen months before eventually being extradited to Poland.

An ignominious end to an historic journey - it made a good story, and when published in 1825, dedicated by special permission to King George IV, immediately ran to four editions, making Holman famous, financially comfortable but still restless. Two years later he was off again, to Africa, South America, Australia, India and China. He devoted the rest of his life to solo travel.
Holman's books give little indication that he was blind, but they do record just one expression of regret:

"On the summit of the precipice and in the deep green woods, emotions as palpable and as true have agitated me as if I were surveying them with the blessing of sight... It entered into my heart and I could have wept, not that I did not see, but that I could not portray all that I felt."

His singular adventures can be heard in Episode I of The Sexton's Tales.

'THE ASTONISHING JOURNEY'

---